When we first saw 18 Aragon Blvd, we loved the family-filled neighborhood and were enamored with the gorgeous wood floors and light-filled rooms.

Our first spring and summer in the house, we were so enchanted with everything that bloomed in the yard. It felt like a new surprise blossomed every week, and for each warm season that followed, we filled our kitchen window ledge and little nooks throughout the house with sweet-smelling cuttings from our own garden.

During the first year, we worked with an architect to completely overhaul the kitchen, expanding it, modernizing it to fit our needs and installing wood flooring to seamlessly match that in the rest of the house. Our favorite -- most precious -- spot in the kitchen became the coffee nook, equipped with a pull-out shelf and electrical outlet within the cabinet underneath, where we could stash our coffee grinder. We started each day right there with a freshly ground and brewed cup of coffee. And we will forever have fond memories of peaceful mornings in the breakfast room, watching the hummingbirds flit around the wisteria blooming right outside the windows.

We welcomed our daughter in the summer of 2016, and our home became much more lively! The downstairs floor plan features a continuous loop linking all the main rooms together, and it’s fun to remember how our daughter progressed around that loop: first clumsily wheeling herself around the loop in her walker, then pushing her toy shopping cart, and eventually, endless games of “monster chase” running around the loop, shrieking with laughter.

We appreciated having the downstairs bedrooms as a guest room for visiting family and home office space. John works for a tech company in Palo Alto and frequently worked from home, even before the shelter-in-place started, so having dedicated space for a home office was invaluable. Notably, video calls from home via the symmetric gigabit fiber internet were consistently even better quality than video calls from his Palo Alto office.

Our home and backyard hosted many planned and impromptu get-togethers over the years. It was perfect for our daughter’s birthday parties; the fenced-in backyard meant we parents could all fully relax and let the kids play, knowing they were safely contained.

We loved our close proximity to everything: being walking distance to storytime at the Main Library and Central Park with its open space, playground, miniature train that ran on weekends and holidays, Japanese garden (our daughter loved watching the koi fish feedings), and ice skating rink during the winter months. We loved being able to walk to downtown San Mateo for date nights, and the easy access to 92, 101 and 280 for driving elsewhere in the area. Plus, when commuting by Caltrain, John appreciated starting the day with a short, peaceful walk through Central Park to the Caltrain station, as well as the convenience of being able to swing by Draeger’s to pick something up on the walk home.

We were also blessed with amazing neighbors up and down the street -- the kind you can borrow butter from or share surplus watermelon with (which we frequently did) -- and enjoyed an annual block party each summer when all the neighbors came together with food, yard games, and a blow-up water slide.

We cherished our time in this beautiful home and this wonderful neighborhood, and we hope the new owner of 18 Aragon finds the same happiness here that we did.

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